Inflation Reality: 145% Rise in a 28-Item Grocery Basket

Don’t kid yourself that the real level of inflation is what the government’s statistics say.  Those numbers fall under the category of lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Here is the real picture.  The price of a 28 item basket of daily goods climbed 145 percent from February 2020 – July 2026.

A post on X from Jeremy reads as follows:

My wife and I got into it last night about the grocery bill.

I pulled up an old Target order from February 2020. 28 items. $64.50.

Added every single one back to the cart just to see. $158.30. Same 28 items. Same store. Same cart. $93.80 more. In five years.

We didn’t buy more. Didn’t upgrade anything. Didn’t add a single extra item. Just needed the same things we always needed.

They told us inflation was transitory. They told us it was under control. They told us the economy was strong. Our cart didn’t get any of those memos.

145% increase in five years. Not one member of Congress has looked at a grocery receipt in decades. And it shows.

That’s quite a disparity. The Consumer Price Index shows an increase over that same period of less than 30 percent.  We don’t even need to ask which rate of price increases reflects your experience over that period, 30 percent or 145 perecent.  

Every shopper knows the answer.

Remember that the problem is that the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar is going down.  As long as our currency can be created out of nothing, printed or created by a digital keystroke, its purchasing power will continue to fall.  It will take more dollars to buy the same goods, including gold.  Sound monetary systems use gold as a standard, as a yardstick against which fiat currencies are measured.  

Gold is the standard, because governments cannot print gold.